Qafac to commission CDR project by 2014

Qatar Fuel Additives (Qafac), an Industries Qatar subsidiary, is all gearing up to commission one of the world’s largest commercial scale carbon dioxide recovery (CDR) project by 2014, enabling it to enhance the production capacity of methanol.In this regard, Qafac conducted a ground breaking ceremony for its CDR project at its Mesaieed plant, an IQ spokesman said in a communiqué to the Qatar Exchange.Engineering of the project is almost completed. Civil construction works have commenced, he said, adding “the project is scheduled to be commissioned in October 2014.”The petrochemical company will recover 500 tonnes per day (tpd) of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from its methanol reformer stack and will inject it back into its existing process to enhance the production capacity of methanol.With the initiation of this project, Qafac has demonstrated its strong desire to be a leader in reducing industrial greenhouse gases and to play a front line role as an environmentally conscious company, the spokesman said.About 500 tpd of carbon dioxide will be separated and recovered from the flue gas using Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ proprietary process. Qafac had last year signed a corporate loan agreement with QNB for $80mn.The company produces around 1mn MT per year of methanol and 610,000 MT per year of methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE).Methanol is produced at the plant from natural gas supplied by Qatar Petroleum. About 25%-35% of it is used to produce MTBE and the remaining 75%-65% is exported for various downstream products. MTBE is used as a gasoline additive that gives a clean burning fuel to reduce exhaust pollution generated by motor vehicles and also eliminates the need to blend tetra ethyl lead to the gasoline. This produces unleaded gasoline. Methanol can also be used to blend with gasoline as a cleaner fuel.Qafac had appointed Singapore’s MIES (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering and Services) as the EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor on February 2, 2012.